Despite West's belated assurances that we would not loose the notification
system we had with CBC, I have still not received any notices of updates
to my CBC publications since about November. Nor have I received notices
for the LCP titles I had on notify or the former Shepard's treatises that
wound up with West IG companies. So I've been thinking ...
Has anyone considered the idea of fixed term standing orders? I know
we cannot afford to put many of the titles on true standing order
especially given the fact that West often does not seem to have the option
of the kind of basic upkeep service that appeared to be anticipated by
the FTC Guidelines (ever try canceling the interim bound volumes of the
SCT Reporter which surely do not meet the definition of basic upkeep
service? ). What I've been thinking about is once a year reviewing my
West titles and giving West a standing order to the ones I think I can pay
for (after defining what I mean by that) but telling West that the
standing order is good for only one year. That after that, they have to
get a signed renewal from us for it to be valid. That way, I would review
the whole West IG account once a year like I do for MB, our Hein journal
list, RIA, CCH, and like I used to do for LCP and CBC.
Does this sound like a reasonable requested option? Part of the reason I
ask is that I'm playing around with the idea of writing an article on
minimum ordering/invoicing options needed to meet the basic customer
service needs of law libraries/law firms/subscribers to legal
publications. Maybe if we presented the publishers with a list of the
minimum options that the Association considered were necessary to provide
basic customer service levels we might get somewhere.
Mary Brandt Jensen University of Mississippi
Director of the Law Library University, MS 38677
Assistant Professor of Law mjensen@olemiss.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:49:32 PST